Michael Walker: All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Will Cuming. Will is a Platinum-certified artist and the visionary behind Community Music's tech platform. They're redefining artist independence in the music industry. He's known for his triple-threat talents. He's toured with major acts like Glass Animals while driving innovation in the music ecosystem. And I'm excited to connect with him today about building sustainable artist careers. Right now, technology is really going through a revolution as it relates to AI, and also ever since the internet and streaming, a lot of things have been changing for artists. The topic of building sustainable artist careers is something we talk about a lot here on the podcast, and I'm looking forward to hearing from your perspective, insights, and experience, Will. So, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Will Cuming: No worries. Thanks for having me. What an introduction. Gotta live up to that now.

Michael: So, yeah, maybe to kick things off, for anyone who this is their first time connecting with you, could you share a little bit about your journey—how you became a Platinum-certified artist and what the main mission was that you set out to solve with Community Music?

Will: It's been a bit of a winding journey, I suppose. Originally, I actually studied jazz guitar as my undergraduate degree at university. Then I became a solo artist and songwriter, which is sort of where some of that success came from as an artist, which is largely what I’d always been. I then moved to New York just before COVID with my wife, and during COVID, I took a real left turn in my career and started learning coding and doing a master’s in analytics. I guess I just didn’t have anything to do, and I’ve always had an appetite for learning. I think learning music really is like learning how to learn a lot of the time. Some of the most amazing learners I've ever met were through music. Yeah, and I suppose it’s always been a bit of a journey of curiosity. Learning a new instrument has always been something that excites me, and everything is kind of a new instrument, really, if you look at it a little more abstractly. So, I actually started as a classical flautist when I was younger, then jazz guitar, and from there, I slowly added new things, like learning songwriting and singing. I did a lot of it for a fair period there. But COVID, as it did for a lot of musicians, kind of forced a lot of change. At first, I thought maybe I was going to be leaving music with some of that change, but then I realized that music needed more outside skills, I think, really, for the industry. So, I kind of found there were a lot of places that I could start to hone in on with new skill sets and things. That's probably largely how I got to where I am now.

Michael: I can definitely relate to the journey of being a full-time musician and then discovering the world of software development and learning how to write code. I’ve been on that journey in the past couple of years. I was a weird kid in high school, like, with math. So, there's something about coding that really scratched an itch I had forgotten about. I don't know if you had that similar experience.

Will: Yeah, I think everyone always had that thing where people would say, “Oh, if you're good at music, you must be good at math.” I always remember being like, I’ve met so many people in music who have such diverse approaches and mindsets, and I wouldn’t say that everyone who's good at music is good at math. I'd say that some people who love music are also good at math, but I realized as I got into the technology side that I am absolutely someone who loves music, puzzles, and math. My sister is also doing data science after originally doing an undergrad in music as well, so I think it’s a bit of a family thing. Yeah, puzzles and math problems. I think we enjoy them, especially when you start to shine a light on some of the interesting data problems of music. It's really fascinating.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, when you kind of... because I feel like, in some ways, that skill set feels like peanut butter and jelly, or certainly like a lot of contrast, versus the creativity of making music, where it’s like a different part of your brain. So, it’s cool when they can come together.

Will: I was going to say, it’s funny. People do say they’re different, but I don’t know, I’ve found that songwriting and building software, or different things, are really not that different for me. It doesn't feel like a different part of my brain that's working. It just feels like I’m applying the same thought, the same kind of way of thinking, to a new thing. I always enjoyed the challenge of finding out what kind of music someone liked and trying to make something they would enjoy. Just trying to get my head around how to connect with people through songs, and really that kind of two-way communication of music, rather than just as a pure mode of expression for myself. And then when it comes to building tools that people actually want to use, I’ve found that the fact that I love to check how people use things—everyone in our company who uses the tools we’re building, they record a lot of what they’re doing and just send me videos. I start every day by watching those, and I love figuring out—not necessarily what people tell you they want, because that's interesting as well, but watching and figuring out what people need to make their life, their day, better is a whole other skill set. But it doesn’t feel as disconnected as I originally thought it would be, I guess.

Michael: I hear what you're saying, and that’s an interesting point you brought up about paying attention to how people are communicating and what they're expressing, sometimes not necessarily on the nose, but like the deeper needs they're expressing. It reminds me of, was it Henry Ford who’s attributed to saying something like, “If I gave people what they wanted, then we’d have faster horses,” or they would have asked for faster horses or something like that.

Will: Yeah, I can’t remember. That’s the one. And I agree. There’s so much amazing input from people, but sometimes people think when you say you listen to people, that you're suggesting design by committee. But I think there’s such a beautiful middle ground between the two. Software is such a brutal proponent of: if you build something for two years and then check if someone wants it, if they don’t want it, you've just wasted two years and probably spent a lot of money. Whereas in music, I think because it's so hyper-competitive, we kind of fall back on this idea of, “Well, you know, I don’t know if it’s going to be successful or not, so at least I was honest with myself about it.” Maybe like... but you can't really take that exact approach with investors and things on a software project, you know?

Michael: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, it seems like it’s easier to articulate our challenges or frustrations or issues, because those are much more direct. They're part of our everyday experience. Like when we run into something, we know exactly what it is. Whereas the dreams, or the opposite end of it, are sort of more abstract because it’s an idea or it’s further away from reality. So, maybe that's part of why it's harder to communicate those sometimes.

Will: I think so, and I think there's such a fascinating thing around data that, at a very base level, sometimes people get a bit like they think you're being robotic when you're thinking about data. Like, "Oh, you know, we looked at this thing, and there's this many streams, so we need to be changing our strategy in this way." But if you really think about it, numbers and data are absolutely just an abstraction of people, and it's just one input. There's so much of the picture that's not even captured anyway, so you'd be a bit silly, I think, to look at the data and then decide everything entirely based on very limited data sets. But I do think it's really fascinating when you start to look at it and go, well, I mean, for me, I don't think of the numbers in music just as like people are consuming this much music. So we want them to consume more. I'm more interested in: why do we listen to music? Why do we listen to the things we want to listen to? Why do we tell people about certain things we listen to and not other things we listen to? What are all the deeper human connectivity and identity things that come with it? And I think those questions start to make analytics a really interesting and curious conversation, as opposed to, like, feeling like you're sitting through an accounting meeting or something.

Michael: That's awesome. Yeah. Connecting analytics to the heart—cool. You having both a perspective as an artist yourself and having built this company, and having conversations every day with your team and with artists, I’m curious, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges or issues that are facing the market right now as it relates to indie artists or just artists in general, that are looking to build a career?

Will: Great question. I'm sure that it's very different for a lot of people, and some people who listen will probably be like, "That's not my experience at all. Like, I'm thinking about this." But I do a lot of interviews with people—artists and different people—because I want to try to get to the bottom of that. I’d say there are a few things: One is clearly there's an enormous saturation of art. There's more art being created and released than ever before in the history of the world. Obviously, the positive spin of that is that it's easier and cheaper to release than it's ever been. At the same time, you've got much freer, open markets, I suppose, in some ways. But with that, and the sort of movement from a gatekeeper version of things to now, if you make great content, you will be rewarded. There’s no real gatekeeper. There's really just the software engineers or the data science team at Instagram who designed the algorithm—sort of a new set of rules that dictate how you reach your audience, and sustainably. So I think a lot of the challenges people face really are that it’s hard to build sustainable businesses, but for different reasons than it was before. Like, maybe some reasons, like label deals, some of them in some parts, really haven’t changed that much, even though what they're offering has completely changed in the last 30 years. But there's still labels, you know, just throwing money behind something and then taking 80 percent on a recording deal. Like, that's not a non-existent deal anymore. Obviously, there are more indie artists, but, yeah, I’d say the main pieces, if I was trying to bring it back and focus a little bit more—because I can lose my train of thought on these things—are that artists are trying to balance: Am I a media personality or am I an artist? How do I balance these two things of learning how to make great content and communicate there, and also making great art? Because it feels like, generally, for most artists, you sort of have to have both. There are obviously some who succeed on one or the other, but the best ones seem to get both those equations right. And then, on top of that, there are so many jobs that you're doing now as an artist. And I'll extend that to managers, too, because I think they take on a lot of workload. You're creating content, you're editing the content, you're doing your own digital marketing and advertising, and, you know, you're also making—like, you might be songwriting, producing, and performing. You might be taking your own photos, making videos, and then you're playing shows and touring. Like, that list of tasks you have to do can feel pretty overwhelming. And then the advice from a lot of people is: you have to do all of them. So I’d say those are some of the problems. And from a technology perspective, I hope this isn't too long of an answer, but from a tech perspective, I think there are a lot of interesting microservice tools that are starting to emerge. It's hard because you still have to input data in 5 or 6 different places. You still have to look at 6 different analytics tools to figure out how your career is going. So I think there's a lot of learning that comes with the job, and there's not a lot of tools yet—and this is where we're trying to aim—but there's not a lot of tools yet that are good at communicating with other tools and actually start to save us time on these tasks that make more room for creative time and also strategy time that hopefully grows your sustainable artist career.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that some of the biggest challenges are... it's a double-sided sword in that it's never been easier to record music and it's never been cheaper to do it, but because of that, there's been this flood or explosion of music, and learning how to cut through the noise becomes more and more challenging.

And then, at the same time, it's not just artists that are having that flood, but just information, tools in general, and technology. And now there's so many different tools and platforms and things that it could feel overwhelming just trying to keep up and spinning all the different plates. Everything's kind of fractured. So...

Will: Definitely. Yeah.

Michael: Awesome.

Will: A lot to unpack even just with that.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I know, like, you mentioned that this is really one of the core problems that you set out to solve. So, I'd love to hear what you guys are working on right now or what you've kind of found that's helping artists to kind of overcome that challenge.

Will: Yeah, I mean, we're early days on the platform. I had been building... like, I had a digital advertising marketing company I was running with my sister before this, and we were starting to build out a lot of, you know, I guess similar to some of the ad tech tools that sort of exist within music. But we were looking at that space, like how to... originally, we were just servicing clients and helping run their strategy for digital ads.

And over time, I was learning more and more coding and just automating pieces, building out recording things. Um, so I think like probably philosophically the largest thing for me is like... uh, I guess besides the lots of testing with the relevant people, I just think there's a lot of really base-level things that, like, I'm excited by gen AI and things like that. They're really interesting from a conceptual perspective, but I think there's really basic stuff we haven't figured out before.

Which is like, really, like, fundamental thought that really helped to start off with the platform is that I really think that anyone who's working on a release should be able to access a release.
 And that sounds really simple, but it's not in every platform. In fact, it's not in many platforms where, you know, you log into an account through an email address and, well, if I need to share access to a manager, maybe I'll give them my login. I'll share the password and whatever. But actually, like when the manager logs in, they need to be able to flick between all their artists really quickly. When the label logs in, they need to be able to do the same thing, and they need to be able to look at analytics across their catalog.

And for me as the artist... like, I've released music through some... through a sub-label of Unified, which is the owner of Community Music. I released through a sub-label of that before, and then now I have a new deal that's like, not that. And through the Orchard, like, we were originally working through the Orchard, like, the label would have to log in and then report to me how things went.

But actually, like, I think like the pure fundamental thing of ownership within a platform is that... or maybe it's more access because ownership is kind of contractually driven as well. But, you know, the artist needs to be able to access the release, the label needs to be able to access the release.

And then if there's a marketing agency working on it, well, they should be able to access the release and just download the assets from one spot. Like, it sounds kind of really basic, but just like, the artist should upload that information one time and then people can add what they add to it.

But really, like, at the moment, like, the label sends an email to the manager who sends an email to the artist who sends an email to the graphic designer, who sends back an artwork all the way through that again. And then they get it and say, "Oh, it's the wrong format." I send an email all the way back.

And then you end up spending days just chasing all these really basic asset things. And it's honestly just like, I've seen this in all parts of the music industry. Like, in the digital marketing agency, we worked with so many artist teams, and you can see that like... uh, there's some really basic fundamentals around what the artist can save the label a lot of times. So then the labels now aren't spending time chasing metadata and assets; they're actually building a strategy. And I suppose, like, that's the fundamental thing. It sounds really basic, but I don't think many people get that right.

And then, on top of that, I really want data ownership as well as the actual ownership of the object, you know, of the release, like... analytics data. It's not just about providing CSV files to an artist and saying, "Cool, you own your data." It's actually helping them, you know, sort of being a steward of the data, I suppose, where you're helping them store it and then use it in practical ways to get insights.

To do practical things, like maybe you start connecting to publishers and things over time, where you don't have to, like, copy the information here, then copy it into your publisher's portal. And these things start to get automated out, the data entry side of it.

And on top of that, you know, there's no use giving people a hundred CSV files and saying, "Here's all your streaming data." Like, what's an artist gonna do with that if they don't know how to code or anything? You really want to be able to be building useful analytics, but also if they want to do ad hoc analytics, they can export it in a useful format and start to do stuff with that as well.

So I guess there's some really fundamental things. There's a lot more to it that we're trying to, like, look at and build out. But we're still like early stages of what we're growing, and I want to get it right rather than trying to build a hundred features as well.

Michael: Awesome. I mean, that definitely makes sense. But it comes to mind is the Jenga analogy, where you kind of, you want to make sure you have a good foundation, the fundamentals, before you start building on top of it. Or, you know, if you build a house on sand, like, as soon as the storm comes, it'll kind of come crumbling down.

So it sounds like what you're really focusing on is kind of building this initial foundation in place on a good surface first, and if I'm hearing you correctly, in terms of like the biggest... like one of the solutions that challenges just around the fundamentals of permissions, around making sure everyone that wants to have, that should have access to the assets is able to go to one place and have a source of truth rather than kind of passing around a bazillion different email chains.

And so having one place where they can go, that they can organize things, frees up time and energy for the artists and for the manager, the record labels, and really focuses on the strategy. Awesome.

Will: But there's a really interesting point on that, that's, I think there's a huge problem. Like, there's lots of problems being talked about, but one that doesn't really get talked about is like, just how much unstructured data and manual data entry there is in the music industry. And as much as that sounds like such an unsexy problem, like it's just something that you end up spending a lot of time on. Like you have to register your songs with your PRO. You have to do this. You have to. And I know people are building out little tools and stuff, but the fact is there's not many ways to unify that thing, like connect the dots of different things and integrate them. Suppose that's like a big challenge of music that other industries have done a little better. Like maybe this is a simple example. And again, this isn't something I'm necessarily going to nail immediately either, but when you're buying a ticket to a show and then it says, "Do you want to sign up to third-party mailing lists or whatever?" And like, it's worded in a way that's really cold, but like, that's the thing that you take to like subscribe to the artist mailing list in that process. And I guess there's two things with that: one, like that's going to always be a low-converting thing when it's such an awful offer, like that's the first thing.

Michael: Do you want to join another email list?

Will: Yeah. Right. And who does? Like, you really can't be asking people like in that kind of way. But yeah, the second thing is like, well, a lot of the time those emails get batched at the end of the tour, get sent out, and then they go, "Cool. We've added it to the mailing list." And then, like, six months later when they do their next tour, they'll send an email to them. Whereas, like, what you really want is like when someone makes that subscription immediately, like you get onboarded by an email that says, "Hey, thank you so much for signing up. Here's me playing a song that you really love or whatever in an acoustic way. You can't see this anywhere else. Like, just something I wanted to say thanks." You know, where you're starting to, like, you know, people use that email list a lot of the time. I think people are getting better at that. A lot of the time, people will send an email out that's like, "Here's a list of all our tour dates and all our merch," and people just like, I think you just gotta treat it like you're talking to your friends. Because ultimately your fans are like people who want—they don't want that distance between you and them. There's this amazing anecdote. I'm going to get this totally wrong, but I think it's more about the concept of it. Someone was telling me, I was reading on, like, a blog somewhere that apparently, like, the most opened email of all time was, like, during the Barack Obama campaign in 2008, where he just, it was an email that went out. It says from Barack Obama, and it was just like all lowercase, like, "Hey," like H-E-Y. It was just a plain text email. And whether or not this is even true, like, I might've even read it somewhere, and whatever, but it's such an interesting example that, like, artists are sending these, like—this is a pure tactical conversation as well as strategic—but an artist is sending out this really HTML-heavy email with images and all this stuff. And then it's being blocked by like 50 percent of the spam filters or even more, you know, and then they're going, "Well, no one really opened the emails anyway." But then you look at some people who do really good direct marketing and they are sending out a plain text email where they're just trying to connect in a real way. And then they're taking the time to build a relationship before they say, "Actually, also, for emails down, I'm offering this thing if you're interested." And they're getting like more than 50 percent open rates because all of a sudden you're getting past the spam filter. You're writing like a normal person writing to their friend, as opposed to like, you know, musicians. It might be hard, like as an industry, because it's oversaturated, but you also have the advantage that people literally want to hear from you. And if you're a company, you're never going to find that. Like, no one really wants to hear from a company. They want to hear from people. So, there's an advantage as well, I suppose, to being a musician, though.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, I think music is really sort of a unicorn in a lot of ways where, when I think of like, even like social media profiles, like businesses, like sometimes people follow them, but they don't really like to follow them that much. Whereas like artists, like, you know, they get a huge following. People love to hear from you. Like, you're—

Will: Yeah.

Michael: Okay. So, one of the other challenges you're bringing up is around like unstructured data and just like having things connected in a way that's streamlined. That example of, yeah, people signing up for an email list somewhere, like on a platform that you don't even know what's happening, like when they sign up or you, like, aren't really connected with them, makes a lot of sense. Honestly, it's kind of hitting home to me right now too, because the first iteration of our app that we developed was pretty unstructured. The database was like open, it wasn't relational. And now that we've been kind of restructuring with a more solid foundation, now we have like a relational database and we have TypeScript and like all the good stuff that I'm like, "Oh my God. How did I survive without all of this?"

Will: Yeah.

Michael: And it's like, what you're saying is, yeah, that doesn't like—the music industry, like, doesn't have that in a lot of cases, like all this unstructured, messy data and, like, kind of connecting it together. Cool. One thing that we kind of opened the conversation with was just the topic in general of building a sustainable music career in today's day and age, and, of course, with that comes the big question around, like, how do I make a sustainable income doing this? How do I monetize my music, especially if streaming isn't really paying as much as I need to be making in order to fund it? So I'm curious what your perspective is on that challenge for artists and how they can generate a sustainable income with their music nowadays?

Will: Yeah. It’s such a good question. And I certainly don’t feel like I’m the only person who could or should answer it. I think there are multiple versions of this. Like, I have some friends who, you know, they don’t tour ever and they just have a really good streaming audience because they’ve released a beautiful career of, like, a whole, like, 10 years’ worth of great music that kind of all reinforces, like, it’s all within a really great universe. And, you know, those machine learning algorithms of Spotify reward you for doing that, consistently, for a long period of time. So there are some versions of the business that can work like that. I suppose, like, you want to really think about what’s in your control and what’s not in your control as revenue streams. And then, you know, managing your cost structures, I think, are really important to within a business that artists, I think, traditionally—like, you have to be a bit delusional to have picked this path. Like, I am absolutely delusional enough to think, “This is a great idea, let’s just do it. Like, caution to the wind.” So, I think sometimes that doesn’t always go with people that love to make a budget. And I think sustainability does have to come down to, like, you know, yeah, I guess I would look at it and just say, if your limitation is like, “I can’t spend too much money,” start to approach it like that, where you’re building without spending a lot on PR and different things. Personally, I’m probably a bit critical of PR at most levels for an artist anyway. But, yeah, in terms of sustainability, like, you’ve obviously got the DTC (direct-to-consumer) model where you’re building your mailing list, you’re trying to get more than a fraction of a cent out of each fan, you know, the “thousand true fans” concept. And I think that that is a really important part of your business, like as a revenue stream. And some people have survived without building that, but I think with the hyper-competitiveness that we now have and the oversaturation, that’s the most in your control of any part of your business. And if you do that properly and you learn about like, conversion pixels and things like that with marketing, where you can use ads and retarget properly, that can be a sustainable thing.

In terms of the streaming model, sure, it can work with a good distributor or playlist pitches or, you know, good ones that don’t get you bots and things like that. And that can help, I guess, with the Spotify revenue conversation. You’ve got the issue of, like, I don’t know if this is a term that people generally know, but like the cold start problem with an algorithm, where the algorithm on Spotify, the collaborative filtering concept, is that, you know, if user A or user 1 likes A and B, then, and user B likes A, B, and C, then user 1 is also probably likely to like C, that sort of concept. But until you have enough data behind your music or your track or whatever, you’re not going to get recommended. I think the sustainable side of Spotify is once you get into the recommendation algorithms and you get support there. So, like, people use ad campaigns to try and fuel that growth or maybe pitching to editorial playlists and hopefully that starts to lead to it. Or like the slow and steady path of building a fan base over a few years. But yeah, I suppose to try to summarize that and not let it waffle on too long, there are multiple revenue streams that, you know, if I was doing it all again now from, like, my early twenties or something, I probably would try and have another job at the same time until that makes sense to make a shift. And I would spend a lot more time focusing on building my mailing list and things like that. You know, people might even go, “Look at me. I don’t really spend a heap of time marketing myself at this point,” and I haven’t really posted much at all for five years because I just went and learned coding, as that was what I felt like was the path for me to grow a sustainable career path. But yeah, I guess in the long run, like, it’s lonely to run a business on your own, which I have done for about six years with my own work, but I’ve also been profitable in that period because I have no one else, no other mouths really t’ feed, except for, like, you know, some producers or people I’ve collaborated with. But yeah, you’ve kind of got, really, you’ve got the two paths of, do I go directly to my consumer or do I play the game of trying to get B2B support from Spotify, Apple, and touring? Well, I guess touring’s kind of in the middle of the two where it’s still direct to consumer, but you’re not really owning the relationship. Yeah, those are your pa’hs, I suppose you can take. And lar’ely, as unpopular as this is, like, the most important thing really is just making sure that you’re making the best art possible. That's really the ’iggest lever you have toward buildi’g a sustainable business. And then, probably just not spending all your money. Yeah, that was a long-winded answer. I honestly thought we could talk about it for, like, two hours, so it’s probably not a great answer, but…

Michael: I mean, that's fantastic. No, I think it was super helpful. And I agree. I think that we could probably talk for, like, yeah, a full day on this, but it's a recap. It sounds like, you know, a few of the biggest opportunities are, one, is around, you know, if you're connecting with your fans directly, you know, trying to establish this true fan relationship so that instead of just earning a fraction of a penny per fan, you actually have more of a relationship with them. You can offer things and maybe it's a VIP membership, or maybe it's, you know, a private house concert, or there's different things that you can offer that are much more valuable than, like, a fraction of a penny. So, that's, you know, that's one direction. And, also just in general, you know, product—and this probably goes for every business—is that marketing can sort of prop up a subpar product short term, but, like, really, when you look at any successful business long term, it's always because they've had like a product revolution and they just have the best product on the market and the market eventually kind of finds that. And so, there's a lot of truth in terms of just focusing on like creating great music, a great product, and product. This doesn't necessarily just have to be the music, too. Like, it could be also the offers and the things that you're creating with this live shows or different things.

Will: A hundred percent. Yeah, I think those are all great points. And I think, like, maybe some good case studies to think about are, like, the Chapel Rones and people like that in this world that, like, if you look at how long they just kind of honed their craft for, at some point, it’s just so good.

And it just kind of explodes. And everyone says, "Oh, overnight, this thing came out of nowhere." But, you know, these people are spending a long time building. They are building fans as they go, but probably more than anything, they’re really, like, getting good at their craft.

Like, getting amazing at their craft, actually. And then, I suppose, like, this is a bit of a scary thought because I think a lot of musicians, we kind of lack confidence as well, a lot of the time. And when you are the product, it comes with a lot of mental challenges, I think, as well.

But there is an element of, if you truly think of your favorite artists, if you really are making songs as good as that artist, you have a really good chance that there are systems in place now that never were there before, that actually can reward you without you needing to have a major label deal.

Like, there are still people who would say, "Well, you need the major label deal," whatever. I’ve seen so many examples of that not being at all true. Like, there’s artists who are really just making beautiful, incredible music.

I’ve got maybe a good example: my friend Dustin Tebbett, an Australian artist, who hasn’t had a manager for like five or so years now. He just released this really beautiful folk music, like indie kind of folk, and he always kind of has more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify because he had some work early on that was just incredible, connected, and he’s just kept exploring the world he wanted to explore, building this really beautiful universe.

And he doesn’t really post much on socials or do any of that stuff, but he really, really makes incredible art that is sustainable. You could argue various things, maybe he got in at the right time when there was less competition on Spotify, yada, yada. But if I was really being honest about my own work versus a song of his or something, I’d say, like, it’s just an amazing song that he wrote, you know, and he produces.

It’s sustainable because he makes a lot of stuff. He mixes it himself a lot of the time. Like, it is a sustainable model. But equally, like, in the end, the art has to be just so good. And if it’s not, I hate saying, like, "If it’s not, just go back to the drawing board," because I think people still need to be feeling confident as they move forward through this journey.

I’m not trying to be, like, a naysayer and say that you can’t achieve it. It’s just more, like, enjoy the journey and remember that if you make something that’s truly great, and it feels like eight weeks later, people aren’t responding, it’s possible that six years later, it will start to really pop off when other work of yours is now starting to grow and build fans.

So really, it’s more about consistently making the best work you can. That’s kind of where I still come back to. Obviously, you’ve got to do some marketing, but marketing is an amplifier, not a replacement for a great song that people want to play at their wedding, or at a funeral, or at a really important moment in their life.

Nothing can really replace it. No amount of gimmicks can suck me into doing that in the long run.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So it’s, I mean, I can definitely relate to it because I think all of us, like, start out... It’s not like anyone releases a song, their first song, and it’s just amazing. Like, everyone kind of has to go through a phase where they release something, and it has to kind of suck until it doesn’t suck anymore.

I remember our first album that we recorded with my band. We were in high school, and it was like, we recorded it locally, and it was... It was not good. You know, like, in hindsight, it was like, "Yeah, this is pretty bad."

But we thought it was amazing at the time. But, like, we did get our start by walking up to fans, waiting in lines for shows, introducing ourselves, and sharing it. And, you know, we got our first thousand true fans with that CD.

But like, if we had just propped ourselves on that CD and that was it, then there’s no possible way that we would have been able to build a career. We toured for about 10 years, and, you know, like, there’s no way we could have done it.

But, like, also, like, you have to kind of acknowledge and embrace where you’re at right now and know that, like, you know, wherever you’re at, it’s like, you know, you can get yourself out there. You can start taking the right steps to connect with people, and your product will improve, you know, as long as you keep focusing on it.

So hopefully not something people will feel discouraged about, but just sort of like, you know, they understand that it’s just about taking consistent steps.

Will: Hmm. A really good point. I think sometimes when I talk about this, I’m a real optimist, but it sounds a little bit pessimistic, perhaps. But I’m definitely more trying to say, like, I guess two positives that come out of that is, like, one, nobody really knows when you’ve written a great song or not.

Like, I think a lot of the time, the stories that you hear... So someone says, "I knew it was great," but a lot of the time, I hear people say, like, the manager said, "So, like, with Tomes and I is a great example. She’s an Australian artist who has that really big song 'Dance Monkey.'"

Her manager said to her before just before she released it, "Look, I know the last song went really well, but just temper your expectations. Like, if this one doesn’t do that well, don’t stress about it. It’s fine." And it’s like the fourth most streamed song of all time now, I believe. So it’s like, okay, well...

A, like, people often don’t know where you’re at with it, but B, you know, I’m not trying to sound like a gambler with this either, but the next... you might have to write that release to get to the next release, which might be the one that really starts to go somewhere.

Like, you know, they talk a lot about, like, quantity is how you achieve quality, rather than necessarily... You’re not trying to say, "Well, I won’t release anything until it’s perfect," because A, you just don’t know if something’s going to connect a lot of the time anyway. But B, like, you have to write lots of songs to eventually get to the ones that start to do that.
 I guess you just want to be sustainable on the way, where, like, if you’re starting a 15-piece band, it’s probably going to be hard to be sustainable because you’re just going to run out of money before you release or tour.

Like, maybe the moment you start touring. So you’re finding a way to have something where you work within some limitations. Like, maybe it’s a smaller band setup or you might have to tour solo for a while, but every time you tour, you know, you might not be all there yet, but every person you meet on that tour, every show you play, all these experiences are all going to lead to whatever you’re next making anyway.

So it’s all snowballing into itself that, you know, Chaperone didn’t take eight years sitting at home writing and then after eight years, released the best album of all time. You know, it was a journey of lots and lots of releases, connecting to fans, learning about people themselves.
 And it’s really fun, like enjoying that journey. Like, you never know where these things are going to take you. I never thought I’d be building technology in music, like, six years ago. I would have thought, "Yeah, that’d be the first... I’d never written a line of code." So...

Yeah, it’s definitely not to discourage, it’s more just to say, you know, just to be realistic that spending like an extra hundred thousand on promoting your new album might not be what’s needed.

Like, you might actually spend more time and energy just making more songs and just keep rolling through. And, you know, if you make content and release stuff, you can usually tell organically if something’s working quite well, and then you can kind of fan the flames a bit.
 So it’s more that I hope that sort of maybe clarifies that thought that I have. All the optimism in the world, I think anyone can achieve amazing things in art. I just think, um, don’t make your first EP and then spend a hundred thousand to promote it and then go, "Shit, I have no money left. I don’t know what I’m going to do from here."

Like, just kind of ramp it up and watch as things go. Like, if people are responding really well, then maybe test out putting some ad spend into things and trying some things.
 But yeah, the main lever still is how good you can connect to your audience through your art and the experience of them engaging with your art. So that should actually give you a lot of confidence that the power is in your hands more than it has ever been, which is an exciting way to think about it.

More exciting.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah, that's fantastic, and I think you just articulated it really well. It actually reminded me of something similar for businesses or tech businesses too, where, you know, you could invest a lot of money, time, or resources into building something that isn't necessarily—like, there's not a market fit, or the product's not there, or it's not providing value. But if you actually listen to people, have conversations, and build it around that, you can build the community more organically, and then you can start to pour gasoline on the fire.

Cool. Well, man, this has been a really fun conversation. I appreciate you again, taking the time to hop on here and share a little bit about your experience and insights, both from your music and also, you know, building this company. And, you know, for anyone that's listening or watching this right now, who's interested in learning more about Community Music, what would be the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Will: I suppose, yeah, communitymusic.net is the site, and you can—like, we're sort of in beta, so we're doing like an "apply for access" kind of thing. But equally, like, I think for me, I'm really always open and interested in connecting with people who are trying to make art or trying ideas that are maybe a little different and things. So equally, like, yeah, my Instagram is always a place that if someone wants to just hit me up, I'm @lanksmusic, which is my solo project. But I'm always an open resource, an open book, if anyone wants to, I don't know, tell me that some of my views are stupid, or if they want to have a conversation about the future of music and tech, or want to share some of their own things they're building. Like, also, another conversation that we haven't really touched on, but I think there's a lot of musicians. I learned a whole new music path and skill set that it's exciting to see more artists and creators—more and more of them—being involved in the design and building of the tech. So I particularly love connecting with people in those spaces as well. But yeah, I guess connect to me or go to the community site. Both are open to you. Thanks.

Michael: Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access. And thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast today.

Will: Thanks so much, Michael.

Michael: YEAAAH! Alright.